Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Sharing Culture through Plants

Entry for﻿ Ledum palustre in William J. Fisher's botanical field notes from Kodiak, Alaska, 1899. Department of Botany, National Museum of Natural History.

What would an anthropological view of biodiversity look like? Perhaps one answer is the botanical field notes of William J. Fisher (1830- 1903) from Kodiak, Alaska, 1899.

William Fisher worked as a Tidal Recorder in Alaska, but it seems his real interest was collecting biological specimens and ethnographic artifacts. In 1879, Fisher began collecting specimens for the Smithsonian in his spare time. Although Fisher collected birds, plants, fish, and other natural history specimens, his ethnographic collections eventually dominated his focus.

Fisher’s botanical field notes from 1899 take an ethnobotanical approach, perhaps reflecting his interest in Kodiak culture. Fisher examined the relationship between the Alutiiq﻿ (Aleut) and their plants by recording medicinal and food uses for 48 specimens. Additionally, for many of these specimens Fisher includes Russian and Sugpiat/Alutiiq (Aleut) names, distribution information, and a note if the plant is introduced.

The natural remedies and culinary descriptions Fisher recorded sparked many questions: how accurate were Fisher’s notes; how much more knowledge about our environment can we obtain from other cultures? For this post, I attempted to answer only the first of these questions. Conducting light internet research, I compared Fisher’s notes to published sources for some of the known medicinal properties and general or Alutiiq food uses of these plants. This was challenging as most of the phonetically spelled Russian and Sugpiat/Alutiiq names listed in Fisher’s notes yielded no internet search results. Luckily, Fisher included scientific names for two of his specimens: Fritillaria camschatcensis and Ledum palustre Eventually, I also found results on two other specimens using their Russian names “brussnika [sic]” (brusnika) and “kalina”.

Fisher provides medicinal uses for two of the four plants I researched. For one of these specimens, Ledum palustre (wild rosemary), Fisher makes the following note:

“[U]sed […]: 1) as a tea […for] alleviating the hacking cough of consumptives; 2) as a gargle for sore throat; 3) […] as a tea […for] asthmatic complaints. […] The leaves are chewed also and give relief in asthmatic complaints.”

Fisher’s notes align with the medical benefits listed for Ledum palustre on Plants for a Future (PFAF). This entry, however, also notes several serious hazards to Ledum palustre that Fisher does not.

“[R]emedy for sore throats, either the raw berries or boiled with sugar added for same purpose the outside bark of the plant is removed and the inner bark taken and boiled and freely drank.”

The entry for “Kalina” in Plant Lore of An Alaskan Island: Foraging in the Kodiak Archepelago [sic] (Kelso, 2011) contains a similar description of the medical benefits of this plant, but offers more details.

Fisher’s notes include information on food, but not medicinal uses for the following two specimens. According to Fisher’s notes, Fritillaria camschatcensis (Kamchatka fritillary), in the Lily family, was used as a preserve:

“[T]he bulbs are boiled, mashed, and after a liberal supply of seal or whale oil has been thoroughly mixed therewith, it is put away for winter’s use.”

Similarly, both the PFAF database entry for Kamchatka fritillary and Kelso's book mention the edible bulbs of the fritillary, descriptions on how to prepare this plant differ greatly from Fisher’s.

Different from the Highbush Cranberry mentioned earlier, Fisher’s notes record another type of cranberry that is used for preserves. These are referred to as “brussnika [sic]” (brusnika) in Russian. Fisher’s notes explain how these cranberries are “[M]ixed with seal or whale oil and salmon spawn for winter’s preserves.” By contrast, the entry for “brusnika” in Kelso's book has no record of seal, whale, or fish parts being used in the making cranberry preserves and also includes medicinal information absent from Fisher’s notes.

From my brief research on the four plants above, I found some overlap between Fisher’s notes and the information found in PFAF and Kelso's book, particularly with the medicinal information Fisher was able to capture. There were, however, many striking differences. These differences highlight the importance of the folk knowledge that can be gleaned from various cultures and communities world-wide.

So, where are you from? Are there plants special to your region? Does your community or region have unique traditions using those plant materials? We invite you to share some of your botanical traditions in the comments. Let us know your story and we may invite you to guest blog.

Comments

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Sven, what an amazing addition your comments are! Please thank your mother and the other elder for sharing their information and confirming what Fisher recorded. It means a lot to us that we can help to put you together with these resources and regain the knowledge from the elders of Fisher's time. By cataloging Fisher's notes and other biodviersity notes, we hope that stories like yours become the norm. Please continue to share if you make more discoveries!

Thank you for posting this. To see and read Fishers notes is wonderful. Living on Kodiak Island now I printed out the notes and shared them with my mother and another elder to compare the words and also what they knew about the plants. They were able to identify and confirm what Fisher wrote in three of the notes.

Saranak or "La-giit" or in today's spelling "laaqaq" they said they use to collect the rice for elders to who would boil and eat them in the winter. But you had to get them before the mice did.

Brussnika or "knich-tat or as it is written today "kenegtaq" low bush cranberry was used with seal oil and fish eggs.

Kalina or A-mach-shat" or as it is written today "amaryaq" lowbush cranberry was used for sore throats and not just use sugar but honey.

The Shickasiyk "at-tshak-kudach-piet" was so far unidentifiable so far. I have seen this plant and was never able to find the traditional name. Now that we have a general name we can learn more. So even ones where we can't id it will help us come closer to the original name.

As you can read from the spelling Fisher was transliterating the sounds and from talking with elders and reading the Russian we can slowly decipher the words. The use of each plant has not changed and by asking the elders without telling them what he wrote they were able to verify this.
To hear our elders confirm the notes and also share how the plants, berries and bark were used was fun. I look forward to hearing back from you to learn more and help return some of the knowledge that has nearly disappeared from our Island.

The Field Book Project is an initiative to increase accessibility to field book content that documents natural history. Through ongoing partnerships within and beyond the Smithsonian Institution, the Project is making field books easier to find and available in a digital format for current research, as well as inspiring new ways of utilizing these rich information resources.